Serial Port Monitor in 20 Lines of Code

import serial	# http://pyserial.sf.net
import SerialPortScanWin32

pList = [x for x in SerialPortScanWin32.comports()]
port = pList[0][0] - 1 # single/first serial port
ser = serial.Serial(port, baudrate=1200, parity='E', timeout=0.2) # opens, too.
print "Monitoring serial port " + ser.name
data = []
while True:
	ch = ser.read(1)
	if len(ch) == 0:
		# rec'd nothing print all
		if len(data) > 0:
			s = ''
			for x in data:
				s += ' %02X' % ord(x)
			print '%s [len = %d]' % (s, len(data))
		data = []
	else:
		data.append(ch)